#Haiyan and #YolandaPH

The islands of Leyte and Samar have been devastated by 300 kilometre-an-hour winds and a storm surge two storeys high that swept in from the sea, virtually flattening entire villages as well as the regional city of Tacloban.

We land in the pouring rain, the dull morning light revealing the devastated airport and its surrounds.

We salvage airport chairs and bits of cement sheet from where they've been tossed into the car park and stack our equipment to avoid the inches of wet sludge on the airport floor, but water pours through the ceiling anyway.

Our emergency kit, packed with a few days' worth of food rations, tarps, tools and handy items like a torch, rope and pocket knife has disappeared in the chaos of unloading the military plane.

No doubt someone needed it more than us, but it's going to be a hungry few days.

We strike out from the airport, climbing over jeepneys and cars tossed by the wind like toys and navigating our way around fallen trees and debris from smashed buildings.

There are lots of dead people among the wreckage; fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children, babies... many will remain for days in the place where Haiyan left them, the level of shock so great that a kind of paralysis sets in.

It will take a long time for any real clean up to begin and when it does it will be long and slow, such is the scale of the damage.

Aerial images taken over the once-vibrant coastal Philippines city of Tacloban revealed the scale of devastation.

Tacloban itself has been utterly devastated by the storm surge.

Few buildings remain standing; structures made of cement and bricks have been no match for the power of the water.

There are incredible sights everywhere; enormous fishing boats perch on top of rubble kilometres from the ocean, cars sit in trees two or three storeys high, bodies caught in power lines hang limp.

Those living, sit, unsure of how to cope or where to start. Others find their way to the limited help available in those early days and queue for food, water and a generator-powered place to charge their phones so they can call loved ones to say they're alive.

From Tacloban we push out, across a bridge to Samar.

Debris on the roadsides has been pushed back just enough to drive a car through and we edge along through the tunnel of rubble to reach village after village flattened by the storm.

The young girl cooking the last of the family's food who offered me breakfast with a huge smile, the jeepney driver who first built a makeshift house for his family to shelter in and then repaired his battered vehicle so he could help others transport supplies, the priest who sourced a generator so the church could help people charge their phones, the communities who, finally, in spite of their shock and grief, collected the dead.